Chronic Illness Prevention

Diabetes

Diabetes and COVID-19

Flu can make chronic health problems, like diabetes worse. Elevated glucose levels found in unmanaged diabetes can make the immune system less able to fight infections.

During acute illness managing blood sugar levels becomes challenging and over time this impacts the immune system. Flu vaccination is especially important for people with diabetes because they are at high risk of developing serious flu complications.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/highrisk/

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Type 1 Diabetes

Current research shows that individuals with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) are not at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 because of their pre-existing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). However, those T1D patients with unmanaged, elevated blood sugar levels and other co-morbidities, such as obesity, heart or lung disease have greater risk of complications and serious outcomes from COVID-19 infection.

If you have T1D and do become ill with any virus, you must take special care, monitor your blood glucose and ketones, and contact your health-care provider. It is especially important to carefully monitor your blood glucose and ketones more often than usual and record the results.

Source: https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/diabetes-and-coronavirus

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Type 2 Diabetes and Coronavirus

Having Type 2 diabetes increases your risk of severe illness from COVID-19, especially if your diabetes is unmanaged and other co-morbidities are involved: obesity, heart, lung, kidney disease.

COVID-19 information is continually coming forward from new research, but from the studies on diabetes so far, data shows that about 25% of people who went to the hospital with severe COVID-19 infections had diabetes. Those hospitalized COVID patients with diabetes also suffered with more serious complications.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html#diabetes